I always wanted to change the world. Now, I only want to change myself. I’m unhappy with a lot of things about me. I would list them, but I’m pretty sure I’d lose my audience, somewhere around the third volume. So, it suffices to say that I am a work in progress. I need some major improvements, but we’re building on “good bones.”
I used to wonder why I wasn’t more dynamic with peers.
“Why don’t they like me, Mom?” I must’ve asked this question a thousand times, and she would always reply with, “Keith David, they just need time to catch up. They don’t have the depth or maturity to ‘get’ you, yet.” I always thought this sounded kind of mothery, but it would do to appease my 9, 10, 11-year-old ego. However, by the time we got to high school, I was sure I had waited quite long enough. It was obvious to me that they were never going to catch up, or that I was some kind of freak who was waiting on an event that fate had never planned for. So, I changed for them.
Play to your audience. The first thing to go would be my vocabulary. I dumbed down my speech, and added in a lot of patterned phrases. Yes, a 14-year-old is capable of doing this, deliberately. I, also, made sure to use enough profanity that I would sound a lot tougher than I felt. The next thing I had to work on was a senseless sort of rebellion. I’ve always questioned authority, and had a healthy disregard for the rules; but this was different. This was high school. It wasn’t enough to be quietly disobedient. I had to rage against the establishment! That’s what the people want! I’d like to add, at this time, that I never fully accomplished the task of raging. I was just a little too happy with the idea of authority figures liking me, but I did manage to be openly mischievous on a regular basis. In fact, I still enjoy the benefits of being the child with “something up his sleeve.” I am told, pretty frequently that I’ve got a look like “the cat that ate the canary.” It’s one of those little pleasures that sustains me when I’m feeling a little too tame.
I think that part of me bought into the facade I had built. I was always better at being the “bad boy” or the “rebel,” but I really started to believe in this character who was intentionally off-color. I started to realize how much I liked to mess with people. It became my great pleasure to convince new people that I was this calloused, rude, combative guy; only to flip the switch on them later. Most people start out as the nice guy, but I had to work with what I was provided. This character carried me through for a number of years, past high school, through college(a short-lived experiment in PARTY!!!), and into my early twenties.
At some point, probably after I started working in my first gentlemen’s club, it stopped being enough to be a likeable guy with a slightly rebellious nature. It was then that I started selling out. I don’t like violence, but fighting is kind of a badge of honor in that environment. So, I started to develop a reputation as a scrapper. This wasn’t difficult. Being short and fat, I was, often, underestimated; but I’m quite a bit quicker than I appear to be, and surprisingly strong. I was, actually, pretty ruthless. It would seem that I had a lot of unresolved anger to work out.
I, also, have a deep respect for women. I worked in a strip joint. Do I have to elaborate, further? It isn’t that we disrespected women, but how do you show respect to someone who won’t respect herself. After the first few months of observing girls being dropped off at work, in their cars, by boyfriends who were going back to apartment, paid for by their working girlfriends, to pass the time with loser buddies; I started to realize that I was dealing with the most abject of human short-comings. If you don’t believe that you deserve better, you will not aspire to anything more than the status quo. I remember my mother asking me about the girls who were working their ways through college.
“That’s a myth,” I told her. “They don’t really exist.”
That statement was an exaggeration; but, the truth is, the adult entertainment industry is, mostly, populated by women who never hope to do any better. My estimation is that, maybe, 1 in every 20 girls is trying to pay her way through school. The rest are single mothers (I admire these women for their willingness to sacrifice for their children); and, sadly, a large portion of the girls are being motivated by something else. Something more sinister. Pimps, controlling boyfriends, abusive childhoods, and drug addictions are all factors that can contribute to some of these young women entering a business that robs all of its participants of their youths, innocence, and, sometimes, their futures.
If I had not been pushed to decide what was, truly, important to me; I may never have gotten out of that chapter of my life while I was still breathing. Thankfully, I had a group of people who still remembered the bright, articulate boy who had, previously, inhabited the body where a jaded, sad, angry man had taken up residence. I’m, slowly, taking back ownership of my own life. It comes in small decisions, at first. Then, in larger waves of improvement. And I, after all this time and so much disappointment, have begun to feel like a real boy, again. Though, I know the transformation is far from complete.
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